According to Politifact (May 28), Facebook has the following post on the Covid 19 Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act:
“This is what Bill Gates and George Soros want to do – secretly stick you with a chip while testing you for the coronavirus… the Dems have a bill on the House floor ready to vote on it to require this …. House Bill 6666…. no bull…. look it up and WAKE UP!!!!”
Most people would regard this as harmless venting against two of the most powerful and wealthy men on the planet, both of whom influence/dominate health policies in nearly every country in the world. But because it does not carry a book-length appendix of footnotes backing its assertions, it earned the ire of the credentialed Brahmins running the media. They went after it as conspiracy mongering and fake news.
But Politifact’s so-called ‘rebuttal’ is nothing of the sort.
It uses technicalities and minor errors to gloss over the fact that the substance of the Facebook post is quite accurate.
Analysis of just one paragraph of the “rebuttal” will be enough to demonstrate how amiss it is:
“The resolution isn’t on the “House floor” as the Facebook post claims. No action has been taken on the so-called TRACE Act since Rep. Bobby Rush,D.-Ill., introduced it nearly a month ago. Bill Gates also was not involved in crafting the act (and USA Today has more on that in its fact-check).”
Only the first line of this rebuttal is really true:
Yes, this particular resolution isn’t on the House floor.
But another one exactly like it is.
So the claim that no action has been taken on the bill is technically true but deeply misleading.
This particular bill has not reached the floor, but its substance – contact tracing legislation – was snuck covertly into the fine print of a lengthy piece of legislation, Nancy Pelosi’s $3 trillion Covid relief package..
Dubbed the Heroes Act, the massive stimulus bill passed the House on June 1 and is now before the Senate. And it provides $75 billion for Coronavirus testing and contact tracing.
. “The bill would provide a total of $75 billion for the CONTACT Initiative. [Subtitle D—COVID-19 National Testing and Contact Tracing (CONTACT) Initiative].”
That’s just $25 billion less than what the TRACE Act proposed.
From “trace” to “contact,” the Democrats have nailed the PR value of a catchy acronym to get legislation they want.
As for Bill Gates not being involved in crafting the TRACE Act, that too is disingenuous. While Gates may not have sat down and dictated the terms (and that isn’t how it usually works, is it?), there is ample evidence of his signature all over contact tracing legislation in the US and elsewhere.
Corey’s Digs has demonstrated that Gates subsidizes major players involved in contact tracing legislation everywhere.
As usual, USA Today, Politifact, Poynter’s, and the rest of the major media are engaging in misleading journalism in decrying criticism of Bill Gates’ domination of global health policy as conspiratorial:
“Bobby Rush has a long history of pay to play and disregarding paying taxes of any kind. Just last August, he traveled to Africa for an Aspen Institute congressional conference of approximately 45 individuals and spent time with Obama and Clinton award winners, Dr. Paul Farmer from Partners in Health who is currently running the contact tracing program in Massachusetts while his partner Jim Yong Kim is rounding up other states, Dr. Jonathan Epstein from EcoHealth Alliance who just had their NIH funding cut due to connections with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and two representatives from the Gates Foundation, while the Gates, Rockefellers, Democracy Fund, and others paid toward the $19,000 dollar expense Rush incurred for this sponsored event. Nine months later, he introduced a bill to dispense $100 billion dollars to NGOs and other organizations to carry out home-to-home contact tracing throughout the country.”